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Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Museum of Science, Museum of History

I tell you what, if there is anything that we did not see in Boston, it is not for lack of walking fast and changing lines on the T three times and walking fast a little more. We did that town until it was DONE.

I have a love/hate relationship with science museums. I take the girls to a lot of them using our ASTC Passport, and I know what I like, and I know what I do NOT like. I like a low-key museum, not one filled with frenetic activity. I like a museum in which the collections are arranged thematically, not helter-skelter. I like a museum with ample lighting. I like a museum with ample seating. I like a museum that is not loud.

The Exploratorium in San Francisco is my baseline for a science museum that I cannot stand. The girls love it, but it's frenetic, constantly crowded, jam-packed with a new exhibit every few steps, and it's LOUD. The Boston Museum of Science, in contrast, has exellent thematic arrangements and is spacious. It is, however, crowded and loud and doesn't have enough seating. We enjoyed the unusual exhibits, such as the one on nanotechnology--

--and there was a great cheering of cheers and clapping of claps during the amazing electricity show--

--and Uncle Chad hit the girls up with some truly excellent swag in the museum gift shop, but all the same, I far more enjoyed the far quieter, far more peaceful time that we spent the next day at the Harvard Museum of Natural History, also an ASTC Passport member.

While Sydney pulled Uncle Chad by the hand on a whirlwind tour of the museum, and Poppa toured the place with his headphones on, the Willowsaurus and I looked at every single dead stuffed thing, read every single label, in that entire place. From skulls--

--to butterflies--

--we saw it all. We lingered a goodly amount in the prehistory gallery, of course, saying howdy to the 42-foot kronosaurus and the plateosaurus and other awesome and unusual specimens--

--but all the other stuffed critters and skeletons and bony bits were quite engrossing, as well:

I tell you, we did that place until it was done. But then, but THEN, after the museum, eating a picnic lunch on the Harvard campus, the Poppa says to me, "Did you see the meteors?"

NO!!!!!

Turns out there was a whole other half to the museum! On the OTHER side of the gift shop! Which we did not see! With meteors! And gems! and realistic glass flowers!

2 comments:

That looks and sounds like a great museum! Now that the boys are older, we rarely do museums anymore. We did mostly outdoor sight-seeing while in Boston - I had to see the Public Garden just because I loved "Make Way for Ducklings" so much!

The girls were pretty patient about traipsing through Boston, but I tried to be adamant that they not be trotted off their legs and run from site to site that held no interest for them--that's why the fam split up sometimes. I can't WAIT until my little nerdies grow up to be bigger nerdies who will happily traipse around to the Mapparium and the Emily Dickinson House, etc., with me!

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